Harlan T. Beverly writes from Austin, Texas about Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Business for Engineers and Other Logical Thinkers.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Manufacturer Coupons

If you are a marketer, and you sell products at retail, you might have wondered: "how do I make a manufacturer coupon that works for any retailer?" The answer is quite complex, but I've figured it out.. and here are my instructions/thoughts:

1. Get a GS-1 barcode. You'll have to have an approved GS-1 Prefix (ID) number. http://www.gs1.org/

2. Your products should have a GS-1 barcode on them. Start grouping your products with the 3-digit group id. (Products around the same brand or price can be grouped for example).

5. Build a coupon! (use their wizard, as understanding the GS1 codes is not easy!).

6. Get (or borrow) some legal text for the front of your coupon... (example: look at any other MFG coupon, and 'borrow' the legal verbs from it).

7. Test the coupon! (be sure to put your street address where the coupon can be redeemed).

8. IF you don't want to handle processing coupons yourself, get a "clearing house" to do it for you... this is the best one for small companies:
http://www.mpspromotions.com/

9. Good to go!

It really is that easy to do MFG coupons. You might get some flack from your retailers, so giving them a heads-up is a good idea. But in general, coupons can be a great thing to reward or motivate your loyal customers or get some new people to try your products.

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About Me

In 2005, Harlan founded and was CEO of Bigfoot Networks, Inc., a gaming
hardware company, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2011. After Bigfoot,
Harlan founded and was CEO of Karmaback, Inc., a very successful Social
Networking SaaS company, which was acquired in 2013. Harlan then worked for Creeris Ventures as a virtual VP of Marketing for
their 9 portfolio companies. Harlan is currently CEO of Key Ingredient, a high-tech Cloud technology company, focused on delivering Food Recipes via the Cloud. Harlan also recently completed his PhD in
Business and regularly lectures at U.T. Austin on Business, and is
passionate about the convergence of hard science with Business.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Harlan worked at Intel and was
responsible for architecture and development of corporate server
networking products, including the world's first 10-Gigabit Ethernet
adapter. He later joined start-up Britestream Networks and helped
develop a 100% CPU off-load SSL security solution. Harlan has over 12
patents from his engineering career, has been published in dozens of
books and articles.

In his 12 years leading companies and teams, Harlan has successfully
launched 5 hardware and 15 software products including the Killer NIC,
2007 Network Product of the Year (CPU Magazine). Harlan has also raised
over $20MM in venture financing in the challenging intersection of
entertainment and technology.